Milk-bottle cap



Dec. 4, 1928.

lJ. E. .JOHNSON ET AL MILK BOTTLE GAP Filed May l, 1925 Patented Dec. 4, 1928.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

JOHN EMANUEL JOHNSON AND CHARLES H. OSLUND, OF WORCESTER, MASSACHU- SETTS, ASSIGNORS TO THE 0.1& J. MACINE COMPANY, 0F WORCESTER, MASSA- CHUSETTS, A CORPORATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

MILK-BOTTLE CAP.

Application led May 1 This invention relates to a paper or sim# ilar cap for milk bottles particularly, but capable of other applications.

The principal objects of the invention are to provide a milk bottle cap which can be sealed by a non-metallic seal which can be put on the cap and bottle by means of a labelling machine suitable for other purposes, thereby extending the use of labelling machines; and also to provide a cap which will entirely seal the top of a bottle and will befirmly fixed in position by means of a vpaper or other similar band applied easily and rapidly and"tlius costing very little to apply.

The invention incidentally involves the elimination of the wire sealing devices which are the cause of a good deal of trouble in this art, as is well known.

Other objects and advantages of the invention will appear hereinafter.

Reference is to be had to the accompanying drawings, in which Fig. 1 is a side view of a milk bottle with a cap thereon constructed in accordance with this invention;

Fig. 2 is a plan of a blank forthe main part of the cap; and

Fig. 3 1s a side view of the cap ready to be applied.

The soft pasteboard milk bottle caps are now used extensively to cover ythe entire top of the bottle and prevent the entrance of dirt and moisture. They are held in position-by a soft wire surrounding the shank or neck of the cap land clamped by it to the neck of the bottle, this wire being made so as to be easily detached or loosened. Very often the wires .f are only loosened in the household and remain on the bottle afterwards so that they require a certain amount of labor and time to remove them and they are also open to several other objections, This invention is designed to avoid those diiiculties by the substitution of a paper or similar band around the cap at the' neck of the bottle.'

These paperl caps have usually been made of a circular sheet of soft pasteboard par-` aiined to render them waterproof. If sold in flat shape they would have to be folded and creased around the neck which would leave them very rough and irregular.

Therefore the circular edge is creased in the'l 1925. Serial N0. 27,284.

around the neck by an ordinary labelling machine and the expense of the creasing eliminated.

Forthis purpose we take a'circular blank 10 of soft pasteboard or other suitable sheet material as hasbeen done before, but we cut triangular notches 11 at regular intervals around its circumference, leaving a series of tongues 12 projecting radially from it. These tongues all begin on a circle 13 which, when the cap is folded, as will appear, forms the edge of the cap proper at the largest circumference of the mouth of the bottle.- The tongues 12 at their bases occupy all the space around this circle 13 and consequentlythe sum of the distances across them equals the circumference of that circle. It is -to be remembered that that circle is the largest circle on the whole. cap when in place. Therefore these tongues are tapered slightly so that their outer ends 14 are shorter than their bases along the circle 13 and they are made just wide enough so that the sum of their Awidths constitutes the circumference of a smaller circle at the base of the mouth of the bottle. In other words, the sum of the widths of these tongues around the blank equalsthe circumference of the neck of the bottle.'y

TheI edges from the bases of the tongues to their ends may be curved but preferably are drawn on two straight lines intersecting each other alon another circle 15. These two ed es 16 an 17 make a slight angle with each ot 1er, the airs of edges 16 converging and the pairs of? edges 17 being substantially parallel for the same tongue. For this reason this circle 15 comes just at the top of the neck of the bottle and for this reason the edgesgl on two adjacent tongues just come together when the tonguesare folded down. .v y' i .In the application of the device,- of course, the blank is centered over the top of the bottle and the circle 13 comes, as indicated in Fig. 1, along the part of the mouth which is of the `greatest diameter and is 'ust a little below the end of the mouth. T e tongues are brought down neatly over the converging under side of the mouth of the bottle so that the ed es 16 just meet in a butt joint over that circle and the tongues are further smoothed down on the bottle neck and thepasted by a labelling machine directlyaround the lower ends of the tongues 12 and firmly seals the whole cap in position so that it is just as impermeable as a cap formed without the spaces between the tongues and is just as firmly fixed by the pastedband 20 zsrwould be by the wire and, in fact, more Y width of this band. This band may be formed` of4 different grades of paper, even tissue paper and may be lined with -a sheet of cheese cloth 21 to strengthen it, but in any case it is employed to form a perfect seal around the bottle to hold the cap in position and prevent the entrance of dust or moisture. Preferably the cap is waterproofedl by parailine and the band may be also but as its main function is to hold the ca and s eal it, that is not essential.

is. furnishes a sanitary seal which `has all the advantages of the seals now on the market and the additional advantage that it can be permanently secured and sealed by means of labellin machines, not especially constructed for this particular purpose, thus introducing important economy. vWe also because it is held throughout the.

find an incidental advantage in the fact that on account'ofl the fact that the bottle caps can be cut out originally of the shape described without lirstcuttin them in the form of circles and the fact t atthese tongues 12 can be formed in the notches 11 of the adjacent caps, there is a material economy in the use of the material of these caps as van appreciably eater number can be made from'a sheet o a given size.

Although we have illustrated and described only a single form of the invention, we are 'aware of the fact that modifications can be made therein by any person skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention as expressed in the claims. Therefore we do not wish to be limited to all the details ofconstruction herein shown, or even to the system of machine banding, but what we do claim is 1. As an article of manufacture, a paper blank for a bottle seal of circular shape, having an unbroken circular center, and tongues radiating from said center and entirely surrounding it, said tongues having their edges converging slightly for about half their lengthand substantially parallel to the rest of it, so that when applied to a bottle the edges of the tongues will practically come into contact throughout the length of the tongues. l

2. A sanitary protective cap' for the mouths of bottles having an enlarged lip at the mouth and a constricted neck portion i y JOHN EMANUEL JOHNSON.

CHARLES H. OSLUND. 

